American Association for the Advancement of Science has published a booklet “Remarkable Women in Science”
We would like to drive your attention to the article:
Staying Power!
Have You Got What It Takes?
by Jennifer McElwain
If you are fascinated by science,
then a career in research is a great
choice for you. Women scientists
from around the world share six key
steps they have taken in order to
achieve their goals and dreams.
Step 1. Get the money
Jennifer McElwain has been fascinated by
science since her childhood in Ireland. Her
father was a chemical engineer, her mother
a keen gardener. “I knew the Latin names
of all the plants at the age of three. It was
seeded early.” After her Ph.D. Jennifer went
to the United States where she worked
at the Field Museum in Chicago, studying
the fossils of plants that had lived on Earth
millions of years ago. She also had fun with
organizing special events such as visits for
school children.
After 14 years, however, she was ready to
go for a higher position, and also longed
to return home, together with her scientist
husband and young daughter. She had to
face two challenges: find not only a position
back in Ireland, but also the funds to pay for
her research. The first she tackled by getting
a lectureship at University College Dublin
(UCD), bringing with her the skills and
techniques she had developed while in
the United States. The second hurdle
she overcame by winning a Marie Curie
Excellence award for €1.75 million. “It’s
been amazing to come back to Ireland
to a fast-track at UCD. I’m setting up a
really exciting lab on campus—all custom
designed.” Jennifer’s lab will mimic
changes that happened in the Earth’s
atmosphere 200 million years ago, to
test how similar changes linked to global
warming could affect today’s plants and
animals. Her award supports a team of
two postdocs and two Ph.D. students,
as well as securing a promise from
the university to take over the cost of
her salary.
Step 2. Get the training—even if it means having to travel far
Training abroad was a critical early step for Aderoju Osowole,
currently at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. In 1998,
while a Ph.D. student, she won an award from the Third
World Academy of Sciences to travel to the Indian Institute of
Science’s Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry in
Bangalore.
“The Indian laboratories were well equipped and maintained,
with constant electricity and water supplies, even at weekends
and public holidays. In contrast, in Nigeria the dearth of
research facilities and constant power failures have impaired
our activities as researchers. Consequently we have spent
more time on teaching than on research.”
After returning to Nigeria, Aderoju was able to set up an
inorganic chemistry research unit at the University of Ibadan.
More recently, she traveled to Germany for further training
in physics on a George Forster Fellowship from the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation. She believes that women
scientists have the ability to succeed. “Nowadays, women
scientists [in Nigeria] are held in high esteem, unlike before,
because experience has shown that women are diligent,
hardworking, and go-getters.”
Step 3. Get networking
“Women need to learn the importance of building national
and international networks, which they can begin by participating
at international conferences from an early stage and
by seeking out a mentor,” says Dolores J. Cahill, professor
at University College Dublin Conway Institute of Biomolecular
and Biomedical Research, Ireland.
Dolores left Ireland directly after her Ph.D. and spent 10
years in Germany, mainly at the Max-Planck Institute of
Molecular Genetics in Berlin, and was awarded a BioFuture
grant to develop protein array technology and to support the
co-founding of a proteomics company, Protagen AG.
Having returned to Ireland, Dolores is on the government’s
Advisory Science Council where she feels privileged to assist
in advancing science in Ireland. As a female she is often in
the minority, but does not feel the need to make an issue of
it. “Women should be noted for their scientific contribution
rather than the fact that they may be the only woman at
a meeting.”
Step 4. Start promoting yourself
Dame Julia Higgins, professor of polymer science at Imperial
College of Science and Technology in London, remembers
having to battle with her own modesty in order to declare
herself a candidate for a professorship. The departmental
professorial panel had nominated other candidates who
seemed to them to have better or more urgent cases, but
the Head of Department didn’t hesitate to support Julia’s
case once she had put herself forward. “Women tend to be
less definite about whether they ought to be pushing forward
for promotion—they don’t push themselves in appropriate
ways and they’re not as well networked as men, and therefore
less well informed.” Ironically, Julia notes that at Imperial,
those women who go for promotion are more successful
than the men.
Determined to help other women scientists, Julia has
helped to initiate new recruitment policies at Imperial to
make the process of applying for senior positions less
intimidating, particularly to women, and she has worked
with the Athena Project to encourage universities across
the United Kingdom to attract more women scientists to
top university posts. When she first became a professor
there were few other women faculty around her. “I felt rather
obvious and possibly a bit isolated, but it didn’t make me
want to stop, because it was all so interesting.”
Step 5. Find role models
Getting to know other senior women scientists
is a good way to overcome self-doubt,
according to Aoife Moloney, a lecturer at the
School of Electronic and Communications
Engineering, Dublin Institute of Technology
in Ireland. “A lot of women I know working in
engineering think they’re not great at engineering.
The men are more confident.” The
answer, she says, is to find role models. “I’ve
met a lot of women engineers who are two
or three years ahead of me and they say they
think they could be better, too. It’s good if you
hear that.” Keen to encourage other women
to take up engineering, she organizes parties
and educational events, as well as visiting
days for secondary schools.
Step 6. Plan your career
Many women scientists find that the very time at which they are ready to go for promotion is
also when they wish to start a family. Careful career planning—about both where to work, and
when to have a baby—is essential. For Lucia Reining, taking up a permanent position as a
researcher, and later director of research, at the French National Research Centre in a laboratory
of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris was a key move in enabling her to combine having a
family with a career in physics. Lucia was only two weeks away from giving birth to her first
child when she interviewed for the position. She later had twin girls, and is now the head of
a team of 20 researchers, as well as the president of an international group, the European
Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility. The work requires a lot of time spent on administration and
finance as well as science, which can be stressful. “If I had not had the permanent position,
the probability that I would have given up at some point would have been extremely high.”
For Kate Nobes, a reader at the University of Bristol, UK, the question of whether or not she
could allow herself to have a second child had to be carefully balanced with the demands
of publishing academic papers. “It is a competitive job and if you want to compete you have
to work all hours.” Securing the lectureship in Bristol, and the job security that came with it,
enabled Kate to follow through with her long-term family plans.
Getting to know other senior
women scientists is a good
way to overcome self-doubt.
